Police in 31 towns to connect to info system

LISA BACKUS

Published
12:00 am EST, Wednesday, February 27, 2008

When Officer Peter Lavery and his partner descended a basement staircase on Dec. 30, 2004, the only information available was that the domestic-violence suspect hiding below didn't have any prior arrests in Newington.

Bruce Carrier, the 45-year-old suspect, killed Lavery in a barrage of gun fire from an illegal M-16 assault rifle before killing himself. Police learned during the investigation of the shooting that Carrier had a history of weapons and assault arrests in New Britain. But departments other than New Britain couldn't easily access that data.

The night Lavery was killed, Newington police did run a check of Carrier's Newington arrest history but found nothing, Newington Police Chief Richard Mulhall said.

"I don't know if having that information would have changed anything," said Mulhall. "But we certainly should have had that information."

Connecticut municipal police departments are not currently hooked up to a centralized information-sharing system. They can through various links determine whether a suspect has an outstanding arrest warrant or if he has pending criminal court cases, but they do not have access to other department's prior arrest and incident data.

That will be changing in the not-to-distant future.

Newington, Farmington, Southington, Plainville, Berlin, Middletown and Bristol would be among 31 departments that will join an information-sharing system thanks to a first-time regional grant offered by state officials.

Approval for a $1.2 million data sharing project was announced by the state Office of Policy and Management Feb. 19. The money would allow the 31 towns to acquire Internet access to the CTChief police data-sharing project already under way in New Britain, Hartford and Bridgeport. That effort, a CTChief project, is being developed by James Donnelly, New Britain's public safety communications director, and Hartford Sgt. Andrew Jaffee. It will allow New Britain, Hartford and Bridgeport police immediate access to each other's information when dealing with suspects and crimes.

When that system is finished later this year, the $1.2-million data-sharing project funded by OPM will be added to CTChief allowing 31 municipal police departments access to information from every member town.

"Right now you can find out if someone has been arrested in your town or if they are wanted, but you don't know if they have been arrested in other towns or are a suspect in other incidents," said Donnelly, who is heading up the project. "This is going to offer new possibilities if someone gets stopped."

The OPM also agreed to fund a $350,000 regional traffic enforcement project that will allow for officers in three regions including Farmington valley, Newington and Glastonbury to be trained in truck inspections and a $1 million regional law enforcement training center in Rocky Hill that can be used by 25 area towns.

The first-time grant process administered by OPM allowed the state's regional planning organizations including the Capitol Region Council of Governments to vie for $8 million in funding to encourage regional cooperation and services. Other projects funded included a regional animal care and detention facility.

CRCOG represents most of the 31 municipalities that will benefit from the three public safety grants.

According to the stipulations of the grant process, each project must include multiple towns that have already agreed to participate through their governing body and each project has to be completed within one year. The public safety data sharing project was the largest grant approved.

Since both data-sharing projects are Web-based, the $1.2 million OPM grant will be divvied up to allow towns to either gain access or integrate if they have recently installed new communications systems that may not be immediately compatible.

Donnelly said all a department really needs is Internet access to hook up. The OPM-funded data-sharing project is expected to be online by June 2009.

The new system will not only allow officers instant access to arrest information, but will also provide incident data on a suspect and the ability to track crime patterns throughout several towns.

"They'll be able to query the entire region," Donnelly said. "It's helpful from a crime prevention perspective and from an information perspective. The better the info, the better an officer can do his job." Lavery's name was added to the police memorial for fallen officers at the State Police Training Academy in Meriden May 2005.

"Since then we have made strides but up until we received this grant, we still didn't have the ability to connect to the whole picture," Mulhall said. "When an officer responds the first two or three minutes are critical and we need as much information as we can get."